Merle's Secret Spice Rub

It seemed every rural diner and dive bar this side of the Baraboo Bluffline (worth its salt?) had its secret pork or beef roast spice rub,

which was prized by cooks like Merle at the Piccadilly like gold dust. Merle was an itinerant chef,

starting out as a military cook in Virginia, moving onwards, upwards, and backaroundwards as close to the eastern seaboard as he could stay, eventually settling down for six years at the Sweet Shack

not far off the airstrip at Captiva Island, Fl. His claim to fame, and what brought him oddly enough

to Lone Rock in Spring Green, WI of all places, was a summer stint as Jimmy Buffet's personal chef on Jimmy's famous Hemisphere Dancer, a vintage Grumman Albatross.

As Merle would tell all the pilots coming in and out of the diner, a lot of those 'tales' of Margaritaville were true, like the song "Jamaica Mistaica" was actually based on an encounter in Jamaica with Bono from U2, when the Dancer was mistaken for a drug smuggler plane and shot at by the local police.  It was on one of these trips, down to Brazil with Jimmy and the Coral Reefers, where Merle learned how to brighten his roast meat cuts with a citrusy, south American / Cuban spice concoction that kept the regulars at the Piccadilly flying in on wednesdays to the point of filling the lot, wing to wing, with Cessnas.

Merle set out ten "Boston Butts" – delivered from Shel's late afternoon the day before – in the morning, patted them down dry on the aluminum cooking surface and mixed together his secret rub with fingers as measuring cups and spoons.  His gold dust consisted of mostly equal parts cumin, onion powder (sometimes homemade if he had the time), cayenne, chili powder, and a dash of garlic.  This was a fairly standard rub at this point, but what brightened his was two extra steps.  On mondays Merle would  take the zest from lemons, limes and oranges and bake them until dry, then pulverize them down to

powder, adding both a citrus edge and a touch of color.  He smothered the meat every square inch and if he was making pulled pork he would add not only his citrus infused bbq sauce, but would spread a gentle glaze of honey first over the rub, then cook in a 300 degree oven 4-5 hours, or until the internal

 temp came to 190.  With two large prong forks, he would then split apart the roasts into as large of pieces as he could get, mound it on a home made sourdough hamburger bun, drizzle the top of each with three lines of more sauce and top with homemade coleslaw.

If the sandwich was served immediately, the coleslaw held its form well and the pork was hot. The sandwich was a hot / cold, sweet / spicy masterpiece that had taken the Sauk County BBQ Diners Award two of the last three years running.